1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a high speed high density connector assembly, and more particularly, to a high speed high density connector assembly having stacked contact wafers that are completely shielded.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many prior art references disclose high speed high density connector assemblies with shielding structures. U.S. Pat. No. 6,709,294 B1, issued to Cohen et al. on Mar. 23, 2004, discloses an electrical connector having electrical conductors in a plurality of rows. Each of the plurality of rows includes a housing and a plurality of electrical conductors. Each electrical conductor has a first contact end connectable to a printed circuit board, a second contact end, and an intermediate portion therebetween that is disposed within the housing. The housing includes a first region surrounding each of the plurality of electrical conductors, the first region made of insulative material and extending substantially along the length of the intermediate portion of the electrical conductors. The housing also includes a second region adjacent the first region and extending substantially along the length of the intermediate portion of the electrical conductors. The second region is made of a material with a binder containing conductive fillers providing shielding between signal conductors. Furthermore, in discussing background art in U.S. Pat. No. 6,709,294, it is mentioned that a solution is introduced to provide shields through plastics coated with metals, but there are no combination of readily available and inexpensive metals and plastics that can be used, such as the plastic lacks desired thermal or mechanical properties, available plating techniques are not selective, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,471,549 B1, issued to Lappohn on Oct. 29, 2002, discloses a shielded plug-in connector. The plug-in connector has a jack-in-blade strip having at least one first contact element and an edge connector having at least one second contact element corresponding to the first contact element. The edge connector, on or in its outer body areas, has at least partially shielding sheets. Shielding of the plug-in connector is achieved by, in addition to the shielding sheets provided on the edge connector, a shielding group with at least one first element arranged in the jack-in-blade strip. The first element of the shielding group is a base part in the form of a U-shaped rail. The shielding sheets on the edge connector have a planar body and angled stays. Two of the angled stays and a portion of the planar body between the two angled stays form a counterpart to the base part, wherein the counterpart and the base part together substantially encapsulate the first and second contact elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,581,990 B2, issued to Kirk et al. on Sep. 1, 2009, discloses a waferized electrical connector incorporating electrically lossy material selectively positioned to reduce crosstalk without undesirably attenuating signals. Wafer may be formed in whole or in part by injection molding of material to form its housing around a wafer strip assembly. A two shot molding operation may be adopted, allowing the housing to be formed of two types of material having different material properties, namely an insulative portion being formed in a first shot and lossy portion being formed in a second shot. The housing may include slots that position air, or create regions of air, adjacent signal conductors in order to provide a mechanism to de-skew a differential pair of signal conductors.